scratch, static, rewind, reset
by The People Speak
Summary: they live a thousand lives in a thousand worlds and some of them they meet, some of them they fight, some of them they love, and all of them they die. and no matter how many times he dies, he still remembers. OR the one where Link remembers every life and every death / angst / zelink / !potential suicide/depression triggers!


His first life starts innocent enough. He's young and the girls call him pretty and he smiles their way just to hear them giggle. His friends bump their arms against him as they ask him for assistance in getting a date. He just laughs them off, but the poster displayed proudly in a nearby window kills his voice.

The guard is always looking for new recruits. Someone has to keep the city safe and he figures he's good enough with a sword. A girl wanders over to his friends and he slips away, taking the information of the army with him. He hasn't found his fit anywhere else, but maybe he just hasn't opened the right doors yet. When his friends tease him, he hides a smile and tucks the paper away.

He joins the guard, and things are going just fine. He's handy with a sword and he's smart enough to realise when and where he's needed and how to go about his duty. As he figures out soon enough, when everything is fine, his spirit stirs and everything goes wrong.

Hylia is a goddess. In his opinion, their world does not deserve her, but she showers her love upon them anyways. And somehow, he finds himself staring her in the eyes and she is looking at him with enough curiosity that something inside tingles. She lingers and he notices, but says nothing. She's a goddess and he does not find himself worthy of her attention.

The world he knows crumbles and the guard is not enough. Demise, as they know him, will destroy them all, but Hylia opposes him. She is fiery and bright and far too ethereal for their world. Sometimes destruction seems like more of a mercy than whatever the struggle between the two designs. And it's almost over, but in the wrong way, and Hylia finally plays her trump card. She chooses him because he caught her eye and he falls to a knee because she is a goddess and he is honoured as her chosen.

His first life ends in a battle brutal enough to scar the strongest, and that's what he is. But Demise is defeated and he falls, somehow in peace, green tunic stained to match the colour of the cloak Hylia gifted to him. And she holds him tenderly as he fades and he knows he loves a goddess and the goddess loves him far too much. He'll always love her, he thinks, and she promises that he'll always get the chance.

Her divinity is cast away, and later he's ashamed to admit he's almost glad. Because maybe his first life was brave, but he was shallow too.

* * *

In his second life, he is nearly blinded by confusion. He is young and innocent and new, but he has memories of a man who has lived and died in a place that no longer exists, even in their history. His silence becomes a characteristic he is known by since he does not think there are words he can use to explain the panic and choking fear that comes from the memory of death and brutal pain.

It takes nearly no time for Hylia to find him again, but this time she is Zelda and she is mortal, but he still believes the world is undeserving of her. He expects Zelda to find him and tell him she remembers everything too, but her smile is unburdened and she's just a child without the past weighing her down. He wonders if it's because she doesn't trust him yet. He gives her some words, a rare occurrence, and her whole face lights up as she tells him:

"Link is a wonderfully unique name! I'm Zelda!"

And he knows, but it's still too much because he loves Hylia, but in this life, she doesn't remember him.

As it plays out, Hylia does not need to remember him to love him, as Zelda grows to love him on her own. And he is grateful. His second life is lighter than his first, he finds himself noting, but the weight comes when he's least expecting it.

He's thrust into the spotlight that butchered his first life and he's terrified, but he takes the sword and he leaps away from the city in the sky that he knows. Because Hylia—Zelda—his love—needs him, so he shall go.

Demise curses this life and he wonders if it's any more of a weight than what Hylia had already bestowed upon him. But this way, he knows that their triangle—Wisdom and Courage and Power—will never be broken and he'll always know Hylia— _Zelda._

At the end of his second life, he's lived far longer than his first, and he goes in peace, with _Zelda_ by his side as always and their children not far away. This time when he goes, he can almost hear the static as the world resets around him.

* * *

His third life brings a hat that talks. As silly as it is, he nearly wishes for Fi's return. There's not Master Sword here, so he's stuck with Ezlo. Waking up this time did not bring the confusion and suffocating panic that his second life did. But there's still Zelda and he still loves her, so he clings to that.

Ezlo encourages him to be a hero for the people, and he finally realises that it's what he wants too, so he does. He fights and fights and saves and saves. He changes size so often that such a transformation becomes fluid and easy, but someone will still need to stop Vaati. He supposes Demise lives here in the Sorcerer.

His third life is scared. The death of the original still haunts him, but he longs for the prosperity that the second life found with Zelda, so he soldiers on.

His third death comes from in an accident: a journey years after his original journey that takes a tragic turn. As he fades, he knows that Zelda, again his wife, will chide him for his recklessness. He only fears they will not be together in the next one. He doesn't believe he's ready this time when the world restarts.

* * *

In his fourth life, he can become four people. It's ironic and a little frightening too. His personality fluctuates, but he's finally able to speak to someone who understands about the memories of the three lives before him. He just wishes it didn't have to be himself.

Zelda lives again. And he loves her; each of him does so equally, but truly there's only one. After Vaati falls again, he's glad to leave the sword and walk away. Zelda takes his hand, and this time the memories don't bother him quite as much.

But soon he notices that he has four personalities. Perhaps he was okay before, but having four bodies with four separate minds, was too much as all the personalities are retained. He drives himself crazy. He had sworn to himself that the memories weren't bothering him, but now with four separate minds from this life, and three lives before it, he's losing his mind.

And as he clutches at his hair madly and looks at her, Zelda looks terrified. Not of him, he decides, but rather, she's terrified for him. Because he's losing his mind and he's not quite sure who he is, which incarnation of Hylia he is in love with, and how he's supposed to keep being a hero.

At the end of the fourth life, the static in his head that only he can hear is too great and he knows that they'll spend ages trying to figure out why their hero disappeared. As he removes his shoes at the top of the tower, he promises himself that when he wakes up, he'll be with Zelda again and he'll love Hylia again. So he ends his fourth life on his terms because he knows he'll wake up again and be someone new.

* * *

He is alone when his fifth life begins. According to others, this time he is a Kokiri, but that's wrong. He's from the Surface, from Skyloft, from Hyrule, but never from the forest. Still, he has a fairy to guide him through the same charade he follows every life and he ponders things. For what feels like an eternity, there is no Zelda.

There is Navi, and Saria, and Mido, and the Great Deku Tree, but these things are all new. He wonders if finally, he's not the same person, or that Hylia and Demise's promises—curses—have failed in this lifetime. But the life he tries to create crashes all too soon as he's venturing out of the forest because he is right: he belongs amongst Hylians and there is a princess waiting for him.

Zelda is a child here too. When their hands brush, he is reminded of every life where she's loved him and how it always involves a battle for a fully-grown man, but he is a child. Still, she is Zelda and he loves too much to flee, because he fights for Zelda— _Hylia_ —and for Hyrule.

For the first time since his second life, this existence leads him to his old partner's side: The Master Sword. Navi is ignorant to the raging memories in his head, and though he tries for reassurance, Fi does not awaken, because he is not her hero. He is not sure what to think of that, because he is still a hero; Rauru has ensured that seven years has not changed that.

This journey is long and tiring. He wants to give up, fall, and just wait for the end, but the thought of Zelda, missing since the Door of Time was opened, and his new acquaintances including Sheik, Malon, and the sages drive him forth. The world he ventures across is different and this battle with darkness and despair feels much more like his first life than any of the others have.

And Malon. He thinks, if he wasn't the hero, and if he wasn't blessed—doomed—to love Hylia forever, he could have loved her. But, he soldiers forth because Sheik—Zelda—is awaiting his rescue and Ganondorf—Demise—awaits defeat.

And in the end, the world starts to blur away. The static flushes through his ears which stills him. The static comes at the end, and this is not the end. The Hero of Time will not fall so easily, but there is a moment where he can picture the blade of the Evil King piercing his chest and he falls to the music of Zelda's screams. But then he blinks and he is with the Princess alone in the Spirit Realm and she's apologising for everything before she sends him back.

And he carries the memories of Ganon's blade, even though he awakens in the body of a child. When he treks back to the castle, determined to halt Ganon before he can get started, he finds the princess in her garden. But she's not a child. Her face is scratched and worn and seven years older than it should be. Her eyes close and she shakes her head when she sees him.

"You don't exist here anymore," she tells him.

He blinks and the adult princess disappears and the child is back, with the smile as bright and innocent as sunshine. He stays only long enough to see Ganondorf fall, before he runs, refusing to tarnish this beautiful princess despite the cries of his heart that he should love her. He finds a new land and it's doomed. As he stares up at the moon, the imminent doom, it feels almost poetic because this whole land runs on a timer, but it feels like each of his lives is on a timer.

* * *

His sixth life begins as one life, but soon he realises that the world—the universe—is tearing him in three. He has the memories of the child who adventured and won and returned to his youth and ran away, but he also has the memories of a dark and tired hero who fought on past his first defeat of Ganondorf. And then there's the shocking pain of a sword protruding from his chest because in the final battle _he died_.

His head clears and the most prominent in his triple vision is the view of a tiny town in the forest, just like his last life, but this time there's already a farm girl awaiting affections that he can't bestow upon her. Every time his eye flicker shut for even a fraction of a second, he sees the other lives: the hero determined to traverse the Dark World and Hyrule to save his princess, and the young island boy who sails the wide open seas that were once his home to find his little sister who has never existed before.

But he keeps coming back to the life in Hyrule with the farm girl and the princess whom he never truly meets before the world falls and she is gone because he's well acquainted with another princess who needs his help just as badly, and he thinks that in this life, he loves her a little too. This journey tears him apart. It's hard and dark and the transformations ripple his bones and he loses his humanity as he stalks monsters as a beast, but is then forced back into himself, but he's never truly there, and even Midna can't help him with that.

In the one where the Hero of Time died, Agahnim falls and Ganon rises and the Hero of Legend saves the day, but he has many more struggles ahead. And he does not stay with his Hylia either because he is too damaged and lost to be with her.

In the one where the Hero of Time kept the faulty future, the child saves his sister, finds his Hylia, and defeats Ganondorf again, drowning Hyrule forever. He stays with his Zelda—Tetra—and spends the rest of his life at her side before they go out in a blaze of glory, the new lands discovered and settled.

Still, in Twilight, he struggles. The girls who called his first life handsome will murmur in his direction until they see his eyes which are sunken with grief and age and weariness. He's is beaten and beaten, but he never submits because there is work to be done. And just as in all his other lives, the puppet—Zant—falls and then he takes down Ganondorf.

The difference this time is the princess. She is not as young and gentle as the other incarnations of his love have been since he was too late to save her from the corruption of the world and she's had to face hardship on her own. As he looks up at her, he wonders. She's a princess, but every inch a queen. He's drawn to her, and despite all other options, he can't love anyone but her, and yet they're both too damaged to love in this life.

He stews in nightmares and his demons for several years past the journey's end, but without her, and without Midna's comfort that he has relied on, there is nothing he lives for. His sixth life, the broken and tired, disappears into the woods and is never heard from again. The world flickers once more between three heroes, but it settles with the Hero of Twilight as the static overtakes him and the universe resets the hero again.

* * *

His seventh life is short and uneventful. There is no trouble and no princess, and he lives a quiet life on a farm, dreaming of princesses and knights and combat and battles from the past that have scarred a young boy beyond belief. And he wakes in the middle of the night, shaking and screaming with nightmares from lives that history barely acknowledges and his parents look on in horror.

This life he waits out in front of a mirror, watching age settle in the lines around his blue eyes that can no longer carry the happiness they used to.

* * *

In his eighth life, it feels like he is simply reliving the past lives. He draws the sword and splits himself in four again for his princess, his Zelda who knows him, but his mind is split more than four times. He's still living in three different lives.

Alongside the confusion and mind-splitting that comes with the Four Sword, he seems to relive the life of the Hero of Legend as the New Hero of Hyrule and he relives the late adventures of the Hero of Winds as the Hero of the Lokomo.

At the end of his eighth life's journey, he puts away the sword and lives three lives at once, but Zelda is with him in all three and she loves him again. She loves the broken, lost, confused hero that she blessed with her courage generations—eons—ago. He doesn't deserve her. The world does not deserve the beauty that comes with his princess.

The three deaths of his eighth life are quiet and peaceful. There is no conflict, but as his vision darkens and the familiar static swims in his mind, he considers what the world could have been like if he couldn't remember—if each life was detached without the memories of his previous lives. He decides, as his eyes close, it would make him feel more _human_.

* * *

In the ninth, he's a knight and she's princess and they walk parallel lives that never intersect.

* * *

In the tenth, he's a thief and she's the baker's daughter and their only interaction is when he robs her father blind, despite the ache to stay at her side.

* * *

In the eleventh, she's the princess again and he's the stable boy who admires her from afar, but this one hurts because he gets to watch her fall for the foreign prince.

* * *

In the twelfth, he finds her in the middle of a rioting crowd, but neither of them can keep their grip on slim, food-deprived hands, and that mob gets violent too quickly.

* * *

In the thirteenth, she kisses him on her balcony and hides him away from the world as chaos reigns across the land and he can't summon the energy to rise against it.

* * *

In the fourteenth, he almost forgets the horrors he's seen. He's a simple army recruit and she's the reigning princess. That simple life dissolves quickly when the kingdom is thrust into a war against a blank face from the shadows and Zelda disappears. He's willing to embrace the hero's mantle in this life because she needs him.

And it turns out that Cia, the evil behind the attacks on Hyrule, has seen it all. He pauses because he's not sure what to think. He's no longer the only one who knows. It's a strange feeling because everything he knows about himself and the pain he's crawled through and the notches from people slain by his hand in his invisible belt can be seen by someone else. Yet while he takes this knowledge and projects it into his new lives, Cia clings to his past lives.

He condemns her.

He chooses Zelda—Hylia—because he always will and the Sorceress' screams will echo in his mind for the rest of his lives, and she'll make sure of that. Not even Zelda's gentle touch can chase away the poisoned memories from his past lives and the fear that closes around his throat.

* * *

His fifteenth life is spent as a simple farmer, but he carries the mantle of the hero in his mind and his world flickers between his accepted reality to the world where the Hero of Legend existed because now as he stabs his pitchfork into the hay, the Hero of Legend drives his sword into Ganon and recovers the Triforce.

He stumbles away from the horse feed and stares at his hand. His Triforce, a constant through each life, is glowing and he's growing tired of this. There are only so many lives a hero can live with the gruesome memories of death lingering on his mind and the pain that has been inflicted on his journey.

The fifteenth life is bitter and alone.

* * *

The sixteenth life brings him another taste of failure. This time it's because the sword is heavy in his hands and he can't quite swing it right and then it's too late because the enemy archer was better than he thought. And he topples, bleeding and deaf to the screams of Zelda as she lurches across the battlefield towards him.

The sixteenth life hurts like the first one.

* * *

The seventeenth life sees Zelda die first. The queen dies at Ganondorf's resurrected hand and he can't bring himself to look at her body where the Evil King discards her. He tears Ganondorf apart. Like his second life, Demise howls and Hylia beckons to her hero. Ganondorf is felled and the hero fells himself next. He sees no life in a world without Hylia— _ZELDA_.

* * *

The next hundreds of lives pass in the same fashion. He always has an enemy—Demise—and he always has his love—Hylia—but it always ends in tragedy because even when the evil is vanquished, he cannot see the recognition he craves in her eyes because even though she loves that life, he knows she does not remember all the loves they have shared before and she can't share in his pain and confusion because he has seen himself die more times than any remotely sane person can handle.

He's going in circles. The world is set in a cruel cycle of reincarnation because even the evil does not remember facing him in every lifetime and this is a burden he carries alone. Her love alone is not enough to keep him going.

* * *

 _scratch_

 _..._

 _static_

 _…_

 _rewind_

 _…_

 _reset_

* * *

"How can you not remember?" he screams to her. His hands cup her cheeks and the smoothness of her cheeks has not changed in the millennia he has known her.

Her blue eyes are wide, but the tears in his eyes are not mirrored and he's the one who's afraid. Because he's lived so many lives with her and there has been so much love and hate and life and death and passion and pain and fear and desire, but it's destiny that every time they awaken, he bears their burden alone.

She looks friendly enough in this life, but he's sinking faster than she can pull him out. The memories are drowning him. She gently removes his hands and steps away from him. Her blonde hair curls around her eyes and she brushes it aside so she can study him.

"Have we met before?" she asks. Her eyes are innocent and carry no weight and pain—no burdens.

The world scratches. There's a blast of static and he stumbles away. She is Zelda and Hylia and he's still just Link. The earth tips and slants and the ground throws him away. The world disappears in the static in his ears and it starts again.

* * *

 _scratch_

 _..._

 _static_

 _…_

 _rewind_

 _…_

 _reset_

* * *

New blue eyes open to domed ceilings and the crushing weight of the memories of thousands anchor him to the earth.

* * *

 **A/N:** So I've been dipping my toes back in the Zelda fandom. There might be more coming this way, but I'm not sure. There should, _should_ , be a PJO story coming for Christmas if I can jump the cliff and beat that writer's block. Writing this, even with a sore thumb, helped. Also I've got some Kainora and Ladynoir that I'm working on. There's a assortment of fluff and angst coming, so I guess we'll see.

don't forget to speak up

-Nicole


End file.
